I was sent an advance copy of a new extended essay by Robin Ramsay last week. Entitled "Well, How Did We Get Here? A Brief History of the British Economy, Minus the Wishful Thinking" the blurb says:

The banks have ripped us off, screwed the economy, and taken tens of billions in the taxpayers’ name. They are not lending to the productive sector of the economy, they are still paying themselves huge bonuses, and there is barely a flicker of political protest. None of the three major parties are even thinking of doing anything serious to restrain or reform them. It’s not that the banks are too big to fail, to quote the title of one of the books about the events of 2007/8; they have already failed. Rather, they are perceived to be too big to tackle.

This essay tries to explain how we got here. By which I don’t mean the recent events leading up to the crash of 2008 – these have been discussed in dozens of books. Instead I want to set out the older and specifically British back story, both economic and political. The crash of 2008 did not appear out of the blue. Yes, some of the key factors, notably the use of computers in the global gambling, are relatively recent. But many of the building blocks were in place long before the Internet enabled the global casino we now live in.

The story in outline is simple: we got here because we removed the controls placed on the financial sector. For sixty years the British banks struggled to escape the constraints imposed on them by the rest of society. And as they overcame each obstacle they proceeded to create and lend money on an ever larger scale. They lent money against property for the most part and left British industry to look after itself as best it could. The bankers did this to make themselves rich. That’s all there is to it.

This is how they did it.

The essay is available as a Kindle at £1.98. I make no gain from promoting it, but think this one is well worth first if all the price and second the time it takes to read.

The message is clearly thought through and lucidly delivered. It is that the banks have stuffed us by design. What's fascinating to read in a new light are the attempts they made to do just that in the early 50s (pretty much rebuffed) and in the early 70s, when they hoodwinked Heath and created the disaster that followed for the economy.

The treatment of Thatcher - and her awareness of what was happening - is also deft.

As for Labour - the tale in the 60s is of some awareness of the true narrative. That had gone by the 90s.

The only hope is, of course, taking the banks on. That's Ed Miliband's destiny. In that sense this is timely and rewards the time reading it.

9 Responses

Ed Miliband vs the banks? My money’s on the banks. While we’re waiting for this apocalyptic showdown I’ll continue to research alternative currencies with a view to finding a workable template local councils can use to promote economic secession from a government run by and for the benefit of those same banks we mentioned earlier.

I am not in a position (for many reasons) to evaluate Robin Ramsay’s economic abilities but I learned a lot from a small book he published in 2002 “The Rise of New Labour”. I think Robin was way ahead of his time on that score, not just realising what NL was about but digging into the background of how such a groupuscule formed and what they had accepted as the price of gaining power. He taught me about the first collapse of the shadow banking system under Heath and, if I remember rightly, described very cogently how it was Heath’s dash for growth that brought the double-digit inflation that the Labour Govt. of 1974-79 gets blamed for and for which today’s Labour never get round to blaming the real culprits. That should be historical task one: the Tories despite claims to superior economic literacy cannot be trusted to run a modern economy except along feudal lines. They all want to be landlords, landowners, shareholders, private equity plunderers, proprietary traders, work for the big 4, or perform consultancy work or do PR where the right class of voice is required.
Robin explained where neo-liberalism came from well before David Harvey began to write about it so I would say £1.98 is a pretty good investment.
Just as a side point: he’s also written a lot about our secrecy establishment and been a target for their surveillance, so this guy is no ordinary pundit.
So after all that I should say I have no connection with RR but I’ll be downloading his book today, so thank Richard for this heads up.

Reading the rise of new labour is why I see Red Ed as the new Michael Foot, keeping the bench warm and running their end of the tripartite coalition for a few years until they are allowed back in with his loathsome brother or (I shudder to think) the hammer of the poor, james purnell, at the helm..

If Miliband wants a ‘destiny’, Richard, then he needs to take on the City. The banks are simply a symptom of the wider, deeper, and more insidious force (state within a state, would be more accurate) at work here. Until this is admitted any effort to take on banks or any other sector of the finance ‘industry’ will simply be met with the power and resources the City has at its disposal. Result: endless lobbying and threats and constantly watered down outcomes.

Miliband could start this process by announcing a time limited royal commission into the corporate capture of regulatory and other state and public institutions relavant to banking and finance. This could then be extend to other policy areas, such as health, transport, etc, becoming a rolling programme which, at its core, would focus on transparency and the democratisation of regulation and governance. Until this happens democracy and the polity in this country will continue its decent into a charade that gets played out over a few months once every five years, with real decision making in the hands of a wealthy elite for 95% of the time, much as the excuse for a democracy that the USA has already become.

Agreed Ivan. Labour is still running scared of being labelled ‘Radical’ in the media (which is owned/heavily influenced by these interests).
Real leadership means stating the problem honestly and leading courageously.